US should take lead re global warming

Submitted by Martin on Sat, 2007-03-03 18:59

Just seen couple of news items saying US should play leading role in combating global warming. Yes, indeed. The good ole US of A is ever so proud re leading roles such as in the War on Terror (when this is over, that will be the end of Terror; then can move onto Fear...) - no use just shilly-shallying re warming, pointing fingers at China etc, albeit China too must get cracking on the issue.

[UN] Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed hope that the U.S. will take a leadership role in combatting climate change ... "I hope that the United States -- while they have taken a role in innovative technologies as well as promoting cleaner energies -- will also take lead in this very important and urgent issue," he said. Ban underscored what he said were the dangers of climate change -- namely that it posed as grave a threat to the world as war. "The majority of the U.N.'s work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict," Ban said. "But the danger posed by war to all of humanity -- and to our planet -- is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming." In particular, Ban said, the fight over resources that become scarcer will fuel fighting. "In coming decades, changes in our environment and the resulting upheavals, from droughts to inundated coastal areas to loss of arable lands, are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict," he said. While calling on the U.S. for leadership in battling climate change, Ban said that it would require the work of all nations. "These issues transcend borders," he said. "That is why protecting the world's environment is largely beyond the capacity of individual countries. Only concerted and coordinated international action, supported and sustained by individual initiative, will be sufficient."

Gore called global warming the biggest crisis in human history. "This is not a political issue. It's a moral, ethical and spiritual issue," he said. He criticized the United States for having not ratified the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which commits 35 industrialized nations to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012, but noted that the city of Norman is one of 369 communities in the country that has "embraced" the treaty. "You guys have to be a part of the new way of thinking," he said, adding that the United States has "a responsibility for leadership (on global warming issues) in ways other countries do not."